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Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Narrative Theory

Narrative theory within films is the way in which films meanings are conveyed and how stories are constructed. There are numorous theories with different ways films are structured to tell a story, these are Levi Strauss' Binary Oppositions, Vladimir Propp's Seven Spheres of Action and Tzvetan Todorov's 5 Stages of action. All of these are different but all are used in the process of creating a film with a solid narrative behind it.

Levi Strauss - Binary Oppositions.

The theory of Binary Oppositions is all to do with story lines being built up around opposites. For example, Romeo & Juliet, the opposite here being love and hate, the love between Romeo and Juliet and the hate between the Montagues and Capulets. He argues that all films are based around the conflict between binary opposites, some more examples of these opposites are:

Good Vs Evil

Human Vs Nature

Black Vs White

Protagonist Vs Antagonist

Man Vs Woman

Peace Vs War

Vladimir Propp - Seven Spheres of Action

Vladimir Propp states that there are seven spheres of action to every film, these are types of stock characters that are present in all films. These characters are, the Hero, the Villain, the Donor, the Helper, the Princess, the Dispatcher and the False Hero. Each of these have their conventions that are met within films. These are as follows:

Villain - Fighting, Action, Creates narrative complication

Donor - Gives magical agent or helper which helps in resolution of the narrative.

Here is an image showing a brief description of Tzvetan Todorov's 5 Stages of Action.

His narrative theory suggests that there are 5 different stages of conventional narrative, these are, State of equilibrium, disruption of equilibrium, recognition of equilibrium, attempt to repair disruption and new equilibrium. Essentially it is a more complex version of the beginning, middle and end theory for film. An example of this is Avengers: Age of Ultron, the state of equilibrium being where Ultron hasn't been announced, the disruption of this equilibrium is when he enters the film, the recognition is where the avengers first meet Ultron, the repairing of the disruption is the avengers fighting Ultron and his army and the new equilibrium is when they beat him.